Tuesday 8th Aug, 2017
By Edward Haigh.
I’ve spent enough time attending analyst summits and conducting telephone interviews with the Big Four in the past year, to know that ecosystems are a really big deal for them. Like, a really really big deal.
Along the way I’ve been genuinely impressed, not only by the network of relationships they’ve been building, but also by the humility they’ve shown in doing so. After all, humility may be a precondition for building a successful ecosystem in the first place, but it’s something for which the Big Four (or any big consulting firm, for that matter) haven’t hitherto been particularly famous. Frankly, trying to get a big consulting firm to admit that it doesn’t have all the capability its clients’ need in house, and might need help from someone else, has been like trying to get an alpha-male to read an instruction manual.
Tuesday 14th Mar, 2017
By Julie Ahadi.
Researching clients’ views on the consulting industry in the GCC can sometimes feel a bit like falling through a rabbit hole: We don’t claim to have encountered any rabbits in waistcoats along the way, but much like Alice in Wonderland, we have, at times, felt as though we’ve entered into an alternate reality...
That’s because clients’ opinions about consulting firms can be quite different in the GCC from those we are used to hearing in other parts of the world. It’s a phenomenon we talked about before, but just to recap, our contention is that clients here have developed their own views over a relatively short period of time, and from a blank piece of paper, about what it is consulting firms do, regardless of whether this conforms to the received wisdom about consulting firms held by those who’ve been using them for much longer.
Wednesday 1st Mar, 2017
By Edward Haigh.
“PwC, an accountancy firm with revenues of $35bn last year, couldn’t deliver accurate figures on the 5,700 votes for the Oscars when it really mattered,” quipped The Guardian in an editorial piece on Monday, following that up with the straight-faced assertion that what happened was: “Enough to make anyone wonder about the role of expertise in the world today.”
That bears spelling out a little more forcefully: Someone giving someone else the wrong envelope appears to have been enough to satisfy The Guardian--the very opiate of the liberal elite, and a staunch defender of science and reason--that the conditions had been met upon which the role of expertise in the world ought to be called into question.
Wednesday 1st Feb, 2017
By Fiona Czerniawska
We’ve done a lot of research into how clients think about the value consultants add. The best way is one of the simplest: to ask someone whether a firm has added value over and above the fees they charged. It’s a question a client can instinctively relate to and, by adding some supplementary questions about value as a multiple of fees charged, we can also gauge the extent to which this perceived value has been marginal or genuinely game-changing.
Friday 27th Jan, 2017
By Fiona Czerniawska.
Clients always tell us they want to work with specialists. After all, if the expertise they seek is commonplace, they wouldn’t need to look outside their own organisation for it. Specialists are scarce, and it’s scarcity—always in consulting—that fuels demand. But that doesn’t mean that clients are consistent about what they mean by specialisation.
Tuesday 22nd Nov, 2016
By Julie Ahadi
One of my less glamourous jobs post-uni was working as a temp for an advertising agency (I believe that’s how they thought of themselves), cutting and pasting classified dating ads into a Word template. I really have no idea what the purpose of that was–I was saving up to go to Israel at the time and didn’t feel like asking questions. That was until I started reading the content. Some of the things people disclosed about themselves really were quite odd.
Wednesday 2nd Nov, 2016
By Fiona Czerniawska.
An increasing interest in cross-selling is a sign of the times. It signals market saturation and hints at a slight softening of demand. But speaking to a client today, I was reminded just how delicate an issue this is.
The stereotypical consultant is expected to turn up in a flash suit, rapaciously keen to sell new work. But in reality many consultants feel uncomfortable doing so, especially outside of their immediate area of expertise. I remember gathering client feedback for one firm and finding that, as one interviewee put it, “they were so far back from the line, they could have been an awful lot more salesy before it would have started to worry me.” Apparently, the firm’s consultants would arrange regular catch-ups, but would pretty much only talk about the weather (yes, they were Brits), which clients were finding fairly frustrating: “I’d actually like them to tell me more about what they could do for us,” said another. It’s not an unusual picture. Consultants, especially senior ones, are often convinced that their colleagues’ services/skills are inferior to theirs; they think that selling is beneath them (their brains, apparently, sell themselves); and they’re afraid of destroying valuable client relationships.
Thursday 27th Oct, 2016
By Fiona Czerniawska.
We’ve done a variety of research recently that has, in passing, highlighted a gap between the proportion of clients who say they rate a consulting firm highly or that a given firm would be their #1 choice, and the percentage who say they’ve used that firm in recent years. Which seems counterintuitive: Surely you use the firm you think is best?
Monday 3rd Oct, 2016
By Fiona Czerniawska.
Told that a particular general was competent, Napoleon famously asked, “but is he lucky?” And luck, it seems, is just as important a concept in consulting as it is in war.
Let’s take two recent conversations I had with clients.
Thursday 4th Aug, 2016
By Alison Huntington
Every year we survey thousands of senior end-users of consulting around the world, and a hefty proportion of those clients (27%) are former consultants themselves. For consulting firms, this network is incredibly important in spreading tentacles into new client organisations and winning future work. Our research has also shown that alumni are more likely to be champions of the value added by their former employer, far more so than prospective clients who know a firm by reputation or advertising, though they’re still less likely than a firm’s long-standing clients to recommend their alma mater.
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